


Touch It to Be Sure

by enviropony



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Related, Friendship, Gen, Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 05, Missing Scene, Spoilers, Spoilers for Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 05 Part 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enviropony/pseuds/enviropony
Summary: What Trixie believes in, how she gets there, and what she’s going to do about it.
Relationships: Trixie Espinoza & Mazikeen
Comments: 7
Kudos: 47
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	Touch It to Be Sure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nary/gifts).



Trixie believes in the Devil long after she stops believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. How can she not, when Lucifer saved her and Mommy, and plays Monopoly with them every Thursday night? Even when some of her classmates start mentioning religion in skeptical terms, start saying they’re agnostics or atheists, start arguing with their friends and their parents about going to church, Trixie quietly believes. She believes in angels and demons, in Lucifer and Amenadiel, and she knows that the Archangel Michael is the real devil among them.

Most of all, Trixie believes in Mazikeen. 

As Trixie gets older, she becomes more concretely aware that she _shouldn’t_ believe in the supernatural, but by then she’s seen far too many unexplainable things. Looking back, she can come up with no logical explanation for Maze’s extremely realistic demon face or her unreal skill and speed, for Lucifer’s Hulk-like strength and ability to get into places other people can’t. Amenadiel’s quiet wisdom and simultaneously child-like naivete don’t register with her until much later, more of a passing ah-ha! moment, but by then she has the context for it to make perfect sense.

Linda asks her about it once, in that way she has of trying for subtlety and failing miserably. Trixie is fourteen, and has been deemed mature enough to watch Charlie while Linda gets some work done in her home office. 

They fall into the topic naturally over lunch, Linda trying gamely to keep Charlie from making a mess, but Trixie almost rolls her eyes when the questions turn more probing.

“You’ve never really said what you think,” Linda offers eventually, “about Lucifer’s claim that he’s the Devil, and Maze saying she’s a demon.”

“Daddy’s an angel!” Charlie reminds them, prying open his grilled cheese sandwich to make sure there’s no meat in it. “Is there ham in this?”

“Is there ham in this, Mommy?” Trixie corrects. “Be polite, Charlie.” Linda lets Charlie get away with all sorts of things; Amenadiel has, unsurprisingly, turned out to be the stricter of Charlie’s parents. Trixie tries to keep Charlie behaving to his standards when she can, because that’s the way she was raised, and Charlie has enough questionable influence around him as it is.

Charlie echoes her dutifully, and Linda breaks off long enough to say, “I promised not to put meat in your food, Charlie, didn’t I? We don’t break promises in this house.” 

Mollified, Charlie takes a bite of his sandwich, and Linda turns her attention back to Trixie. “Eve says some odd things from time to time, too…” She trails off, pointedly prompting.

Trixie shrugs, dipping her own sandwich into her cup of tomato soup. “I don’t worry about it. We’re supposed to accept everyone as they are, right? As long as they’re not hurting anyone, or themselves, what does it matter where they think they came from?” She bites into the sandwich, blinking innocently at Linda.

Her innocent urchin face might not work so well anymore, she thinks, because Linda eyes her shrewdly, and says, “Uh-huh. Of course, that’s right,” without a trace of the sarcasm that’s visible on her face. She drops the topic, though, and when Charlie starts developing powers a few months later – he’s mortal, but he’s only half human – she doesn’t even try to hide them from Trixie.

\- - -

There are a few weeks at the age of ten where Trixie does stop believing in Maze… not in the supernatural sense, but in the emotional one. After she overhears Maze yelling at Daddy, and saying awful things about them all, Trixie cries and cries, the pain of betrayal sharp and twisting inside her. She tries to stop crying, tries to stop wheedling and asking for things, because Maze is an adult – why should she want to spend time with a snotty kid? She tries, but she can’t, and Mommy keeps telling her not to worry about what Maze said; that Trixie’s perfectly awesome the way she is.

They go to Italy over the summer; it both takes Trixie’s mind off of Maze, and brings the things she’s said into stark perspective. Religion is everywhere here, in every town they stop in. The churches are beautiful, but some of the stories within them, in the carvings and the stained glass and the old, illustrated texts that nobody’s allowed to touch, start to seem cruel – doubly so for being illustrated in such loving detail.

While Mommy keeps looking for whatever it is she needs without seeming to find it, Trixie comes to understand that Maze and Lucifer have been hurt, and hurt badly. It makes sense that Maze would lash out like she had; Trixie remembers doing the same when she’d been treated unfairly. Maze must have thought she was being abandoned, with Mommy dating Marcus, and Linda with Amenadiel. Who was left for Maze? Trixie’s just a kid, and Maze needs an adult to spend time with. Just when she thought she finally had a family, everyone paired off and left her on her own. Maybe she thought all the things people believed about demons were true after all. Lucifer had been an angel, but demons weren’t supposed to have souls. What was there to redeem if they weren’t real people in the first place?

Trixie knows Maze is a real person, though, and whether or not she has a soul – and why wouldn’t she? How can you have thoughts and feelings without a soul? It doesn’t make any sense – she’s done good things. She’s been Trixie’s friend and teacher, she’s helped her with bullies and schoolwork; she’s made Trixie feel cool and brave and strong even when kids at school said she wasn’t. Maze has taught Trixie that it’s okay to be different, and it doesn’t matter if she likes pink sweaters and unicorns, she can still be badass. (Mommy doesn’t like that word; Trixie stops saying it in front of her, but she doesn’t stop using it).

By the time they return from Italy, Trixie knows almost as much Italian as she does Spanish, and she’s watching YouTube every day to learn more of both. She has a new-found love of gelato, thinks that she might want to be an archeologist if she can’t be president of Mars, and she can’t wait to see Mazikeen again. There’s so much they have to talk about.

Maze avoids her for the first few weeks, but eventually they talk again, and Trixie thinks that Mommy believes that Lucifer really is the Devil now, because she’s lied to Maze about Trixie not wanting to see her. Mommy must be afraid of demons still. Trixie knows it takes time for adults to see the truth sometimes, so she waits patiently for Mommy to come around, and spends all the time she can with Maze. She learns knew knife tricks, how to wriggle out of difficult holds, how to wait patiently and quietly so that the person she’s talking to feels the need to fill the silence. 

She and Maze talk. A lot. They talk about what Hell is like, how Maze learned so much about Earth if she’d never been here before, and all sorts of things. Maze apologizes for the awful words she said, several times, and Trixie says it’s okay. She understands. They talk about that, too; about being hurt and being abandoned. Trixie thinks that maybe Maze is going to be okay now.

Then Lucifer’s gone, and Eve’s gone, and everyone is miserable except Linda and Amenadiel. Mommy misses Lucifer, Maze misses Eve, Daddy’s still upset about Miss Charlotte… baby Charlie makes them all smile, but Trixie knows Mommy cries at night, and Maze is short-tempered with all of them.

Then Lucifer’s brother Michael pretends to be him, and everything gets weird. Trixie doesn’t actually find out about Michael until after Lucifer’s back for real, because Mommy still protects her from things like that, and so does Maze – mostly by just not bothering to mention things until she’s asked about them. 

“You’ve grown, spawn,” Lucifer says the first time he sees Trixie again, sounding surprised. “A lot.”

“Human kids grown, Lucifer,” Trixie says, rolling her eyes, but she’s kind of proud that he’s noticed. She’s gotten so tall lately! It’s pretty awesome.

Lucifer rolls his eyes right back, and promises to take her out for ice cream on Saturday, because “growing spawn need energy, don’t they?” Mommy doesn’t even argue that Trixie’s not allowed to have junk food every day.

Maze joins them for the outing, roaring into the park on her motorcycle and looking totally badass when she takes off her helmet and her hair looks perfect. Maze never has helmet head. Trixie knows for a _fact_ that this is a supernatural ability. There’s no way Maze’s hair could look so amazing all the time without some kind of help.

While Mommy and Lucifer stroll ahead of them, sometimes drifting close and sometimes bumping awkwardly and jerking apart, Maze quietly asks Trixie for a favor.

“Don’t do it right away, or he’ll get suspicious,” she says, “but in a month or two, ask him about that ring he wears – the one with the black stone.”

“Why?” Trixie asks, and “What do you need to know?” because there’s no question that she’ll do this. It’s both Maze’s way of training Trixie to be clever, and a way Trixie can help her out. Trixie understands more and more that there’s not a lot she can help Maze with yet, no matter how good with a knife she is. She’s a big kid, but she’s still just a kid.

“It’s my mother’s ring,” Maze says, and Trixie’s so shocked that she stops walking.

“I didn’t think demons had parents,” she ventures after a moment.

Maze gives her a considering look. “Where’d you learn that?”

“One of the books in Rome, I think,” Trixie says. “But lots of sources say that. What was her name?”

Maze glances up to see how far away Lucifer is. He and Mommy are almost to the ice cream cart, and seem involved in a conversation.

“Her name was Lilith,” Maze says, seeming to brace for something – probably rejection. She still does that, Trixie’s noticed, even though Trixie tried very hard to make sure Maze knows they’ll always be friends.

“Was she really Adam’s first wife?” Trixie asks. “She predates the Bible.”

“Trix, creation predates the Bible,” Maze says, rolling her eyes. “Humans wrote a lot of stuff, and then kept changing their minds about what was true and what wasn’t.”

“They still do that,” Trixie points out.

“Yeah, they do. And they never knew the whole truth to begin with. It’s not any of their business.”

Trixie feels a little frisson of warmth at the fact that Maze isn’t including her when she says “humans.” She’s not sure when Maze stopped calling her a human in that derogatory tone, but she’s glad of it. “You’ll have to give me all the details,” Trixie says, because Maze and Mommy have both taught her that details can make or break an investigation. “So that I know if Lucifer’s leaving out something important. I have to be able to ask the right questions.”

Maze gives her a proud smile at that, clearly pleased. “I’ve taught you well, young padawan.”

Trixie grins back. “I remain your eager student.” She glances over; Lucifer and Mommy are at the ice cream stand. “Ice cream, first, though!”

“You have your priorities in order, that’s for sure,” Maze says, sounding both rueful and approving. Trixie takes her hand and leads her on. She’s going to make Lucifer pay for Maze’s ice cream, too, in _all_ her favorite flavors.

\- - -

Maze falters now and then in her trust of the people around her, as she will until Eve comes back to stay, but Trixie’s faith doesn’t waver. She knows that Lucifer still won’t give Maze the respect she deserves, that Linda sometimes draws away or pushes back in a way that Maze finds hurtful, and that Mommy and Daddy would really rather Trixie took dance lessons instead of private hand-to-hand combat training – but dance lessons are expensive, while Maze is both awesome and free! – so she tries to be there when they make Maze feel unwanted. No matter what happens, through ugly words or thoughtless rejections, Trixie will do her best to keep Maze believing in _Trixie_ – to remind her that it’s okay to be different, that the people who love you will always come back, and that as long as Trixie’s around, Maze never has to be alone again.

\- end -

**Author's Note:**

> Title from this quote: “Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.”  
> ― George Carlin


End file.
